Toward A Rhetorical-Semiotic Theory Of Translation

The history of humanities and social sciences has always been accompanied by the fusion of historical sources: the same ideas have contributed to very different approaches. On the other hand new approaches look to history for support, or even receive their initial impulses for development. Changes in the interdisciplinary field are accompanied by new historical relations.Translation can be defined as the act of expressing messages conveyed in one language in a different one. Modern linguistics offers relatively scientific theoretical foundations for translation theories and activities. However, most of the recent studies have dealt with translation within the broader framework of linguistics, focusing on phonetic, morphological, or syntactic levels. In view of this, this study approaches translation studies from rhetorical-semiotic perspective in the hope of breaking through this limit in translation studies by showing how rhetorical-semiotic approach is a new and more specific way of dealing with the long lasting debate about the issue of equivalence, literalism and adaptation, foreignization and domestication; and how the rhetorical semiotic meanings are transferred in translation.In this study, we propose that the study of rhetoric from pragmatic semiotic perspective be called rhetorical semiotics. Rhetorical semiotics is the study of linguistic rhetoric on the basis of utilizing semiotic principles and methods. In other words, it aims to study the meaning function and attributes of linguistic signs; the encoding and decoding laws of linguistic signs in communication rhetoric; and the semiotic aesthetic attributes and rules of linguistic rhetoric; and the functions of all kinds of rhetorical devices as well as encoding techniques.Our research of translation studies from rhetorical-semiotic perspective is based on the following major theories and facts.First of all, translation is rhetorical. The translator is in a rhetorical situation. Translation, particularly literary translation, is not a scientific procedure but a personal initiative, akin to that of the orator situated between a subject and a public. A choice of tactics, a choice of language, is inevitable. So it is with the translator, faced with choices at every turn, negotiating between author and readers, between source culture and target culture. The debate about equivalence, literalism and adaptation, foreignization and domestication, has accompanied translation for centuries in one version or another and is not going to be resolved in a hurry. Different periods and different cultures have different priorities. What matters is not to prolong the pointless debate about the'correct'method of translating, but to become aware of the way in which the translator, like the orator, negotiates between a subject and an audience, seeking out a rhetoric adequate to the situation. Translating, like many other genres of speech and writing, is a mediation. Communication is inescapably rhetorical. So it is with translation. In this research we want to explore the parallels between those two mediators, the orator and the translator, and to reflect on the rhetorical situation of the translator.Secondly, translation is, above all, communication. The basic requirement for a message to be communicated is that it has to be understood by the receptor. In order for a message to be understood, it needs to be interpreted on the basis of certain knowledge, shared by sender and receptor. Undeniably, linguistic difference is the first barrier to be overcome so that communication may take place. However, some other kind of background knowledge must be shared by communicants in order for the message to be fully understood. It is at this point that rhetorical semiotics comes into play. The study of rhetoric is a study of the effect of linguistic communication. It concerns such factors as communicator (including the addresser and addressee of the linguistic message), the signifier and signified, linguistic context and so on, some of which belong to pragmatic domain. Therefore, pragmatics is a major part of semiotics. Rhetorical studies in the past somehow laid emphasis on the studies of technical skills of language use, and helped in enabling language users with concrete methods and techniques of linguistic expressions to improve communication effects. However, it lacks to some extent philosophical theoretic depth resulting in the difficulty in drawing inherent laws for rhetoric. Since C. S. Peirce and De Saussure laid foundations for modern semiotics, after continuous deepening and systemizing, semiotics has become a basic theory for social communication. The applications of semiotic principles and methods to various subjects and fields of social sciences, such as logic, linguistics, arts and natural sciences, are bringing them to a new philosophical height and enlightening understanding of their nature and governing laws. Semiotics has opened a new way to the in-depth studies of these subjects, thus gaining an important methodological meaning. Therefore, to apply semiotic principles and methods to rhetorical analysis and studies can provide a new revolutionary perspective for rhetorical studies.Last but not least, rhetoric, in its essence, is the encoding of linguistic signs. But rhetoric is not confined to the study of general theories of linguistic sign encoding in the abstract sense, but sees from the perspective of concrete transmitting of linguistic messages. In this regard, semiotic study of rhetoric belongs to the domain of pragmatics. We maintain that losses of meaning in translation are sometimes better accounted for using the framework of rhetorical semiotics. Unlike linguistic models of translation, which overlook the cultural aspects, the rhetorical-semiotic perspective, with its guidelines of conventions, logic, appropriateness and pragmatic purposes, can clearly state the interrelation between our innate linguistic competence, using that competence, and connecting it to our culture.All the above mentioned viewpoints and facts lay solid grounds for our study. The present study is mainly concerned with approaching translation studies from rhetorical-semiotic perspective based on the construction of a new theory of rhetorical semiotics and under the framework of existing translation theories with a view to contributing to the issue of semiotic meanings in translation, in particular, to showing how the rhetorical-semiotic process builds a logical paradigm for the translation of signs, hence efficiently accounting for the losses occurring in the translation of signs between two different linguistic systems and cultures. On the basis of these claims and facts, we illustrate an inventory of losses of linguistic, referential and pragmatic meanings that occur in the translation, in particular, of literary texts. The translation is analyzed to investigate the main causes of the losses in the hope of finding a suitable approach that minimizes such losses in translation. Since this study adopts the rhetorical-semiotic and pragmatic framework, the following rhetorical, semiotic and pragmatic parameters are used:The rhetorical parameters adopted mainly include discourse and ideology. Discourse is understood not simply in terms of description of the world, but in terms of social action in the sense that discourse is of particular purpose and brings about consequences on people or state of affairs. It is not just an utterance of self-identity, but to be understood as a way of forging, maintaining and transforming both identity and relationship. Ideology provides a way of contextualizing the communication process within power relations.The major semiotic parameter used is intertextuality. It includes all those factors that enable text users to identify a given text element or sequence of elements in terms of their knowledge of one or more previously encountered texts or elements. This is a relevant criterion because the examples used in the source text contain information that depends, for their understanding, on the knowledge of other texts, e.g., idiomatic and metaphoric expressions; hence the effect of intertextuality on textual coherence. In short, this parameter would enable us to assess translation, and to determine the transfer of meaning.The pragmatic parameters adopted include the extralinguistic elements, those involved in the communication process in this study. These pragmatic parameters include the message sender (the original author), the receptor (the target text reader), the system (the cultures where the message is produced and transferred), the context of situation (field, mode and tenor of discourse and others), and the translator. These parameters are variables with relevance in communication process, which in this study is translation.